310 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[JXJLY I, 1902. 



tendencies, a field will exist at home for an expanding in- 

 dustrial output, not to mention the success which lately 

 has attended the efforts to build up an American export 

 trade. 



The use of rubber goods in the United States has be- 

 come very widespread. Some product or other of the 

 rubber industry is on sale in the stores or shops of the 

 smallest and most remote hamlet, as well as in the largest 

 cities. And the sale of rubber goods in every class in- 

 creases, in many cases more rapidly than the growth of 

 population. Besides, no important use of rubber has once 

 been begun which has not been continued. The manufac- 

 ture of rubber footwear was the first branch of the indus- 

 try to be developed, and probably more rubber boots and 

 shoes — including rubber soled shoes — will be made this 

 year than ever before. Rubber belting and hose came 

 into use later, and these too grow steadily in volume of 

 consumption. Once a consumer of such goods is to remain 

 always a consumer, besides which a demand is constantly 

 arising in new fields. The erection of waterworks in many 

 new towns each year widens the demand for garden and 

 other hose such as is used to advantage only in the vicin- 

 ity of waterworks. The organization of a fire department 

 in a new town at once calls for more fire hose. The ex- 

 tension of railways and their equipment adds yearly to 

 the demand for air brake hose and other rubber products. 

 In new mines and engineering development air or steam 

 hose for drilling work is required ; new electrical instal- 

 lations call for rubber covered wire ; the number of rub- 

 ber tired vehicles increases ; and the list might be extended 

 to fill this page. Not only does every existing demand for 

 rubber bid fair to continue, but every new mechanical de- 

 velopment seems to call for rubber in some new auxiliary 

 capacity — the result of all of which is the continual estab- 

 lishment of new factories and the expansion of old ones. 



No doubt some day the United States may become so 

 thickly peopled that no room will exist for more popula- 

 tion. Possibly the means of gaining a livelihood for the 

 average individual will become restricted, and the masses 

 will have less money to spend. And many other things 

 may happen a few centuries hence which would not be 

 favorable to the rubber industry as now conducted. But 

 there is no need for anyone to lie awake nights to predict 

 these things ; the rubber manufacturers to-day have 

 enough to do to meet the demand for their products. 



SOUTH AFRICA AND TRADE. 



"T^ HE end of the war in South Africa is welcome news to 

 the whole business world. However devastating war 

 may be, the coming of peace brings an era of new effort, 

 followed often by greater material development than be- 

 fore seemed possible — provided that the country in ques- 

 tion possesses sufficient natural resources and advantages. 

 It is of course plain how Great Britain, relieved of the 

 financial drains caused by the war, and the check upon 

 industry caused by the withdrawal of so many workers for 

 military and incident services — and the more cheerful and 

 hopeful teapar of the paople, now that the war is over — 



should experience an improved condition of trade in many 

 lines. 



All of this is without reference to British investment in- 

 terests in South Africa. These, too, have a brighter out- 

 look, now that hostilities have ceased, and a similar con- 

 dition exists with regard to the investments of other coun- 

 tries — some of them large — in the same region. There is 

 no doubt that the financial depression in Germany, of which 

 so much was heard last year, was accentuated by the fall- 

 ing off of the returns from German money invested in the 

 Boer country. 



Every country engaged in the sale of products and 

 commodities in South Africa, of course, has suffered from 

 the reduced demand resulting from the war. Freight 

 rates even in remote channels of commerce have been 

 unfavorably affected by the diversion of British merchant 

 vessels to her transport service. And doubtless in many 

 other ways industrial and commercial interests have suf- 

 fered in countries which, at first thought, might be sup- 

 posed to have had no concern in the war that has just 

 terminated. But there is no longer any country — any 

 civilized country, at least — so far isolated from the com- 

 munity of nations not to feel an injury to any other nation 

 or its trade. 



Peace, then, means universal benefit, and to the United 

 States not the least of all. While little American capital 

 has been invested in African mines and other recent de- 

 velopments, and while our direct trade with South Africa 

 has not been large, yet the indirect exports thither had 

 become important before the war, and with the return of 

 buying power to that region the United States will stand 

 an even better position than before to compete with 

 Europe in supplying demands there. Nor is the south of 

 Africa — or, for that matter, much more of Africa — always 

 to remain an insignificant part of the commercial map of 

 the world. The country so long under the conservative 

 rule of the Boers has the qualities of soil and climate, to 

 say nothing of natural wealth, that must appeal strongly 

 soon to countless Europeans now crowded for room in 

 their own countries, and who, now that they will be more 

 welcome, will seek the opportunity to go there and found 

 new populous and prosperous communities, under condi- 

 tions more like those under which some of the great west- 

 ern American states were settled than can now be found 

 anywhere else on the globe. 



OBSTACLES TO PROGRESS IN BOLIVIA. 



"T^HE late Collis P. Huntington, of New York, when he 

 •*■ undertook to establish a transcontinental railway sys- 

 tem, began by acquiring a number of short lines, some of 

 them of small or merely local consequence, with the idea 

 of uniting them in one great line. A traveler one day on 

 one of the smallest of these roads, the trains of which 

 stopped on every trip to allow a handful of passengers 

 to regale themselves at the little hostelry of one John 

 Heller, asked a lounging villager for his views of the 

 changed conditions in prospect, the details of which were 

 just getting into print. The villager listened vacantly un- 



